MSU Faculty of Law

The Faculty of Law at Moscow State University is one of the oldest law schools and in Russia and one of the three first divisions of the Imperial Moscow University.

18th century
Founded in 1755, the original Faculty of Law consisted of three departments, including the Department of General Law, the Department of Russian Law, and the Department of Politics. This structure was proposed by Mikhail Lomonosov in his letter to Ivan Shuvalov, the first curator of the university. However, the first law studies began only in 1758, as the six first students had to attend the Faculty of Philosophy first. Thus 1758 is considered the start year for the legal education in Russia. For the first ten years of the faculty's existence, the only professor had been one Philipp Heinrich Dilthey of the University of Vienna, who had based his lectures on the works by Samuel von Pufendorf.

In the 1763–1764 academic year, there were no students enrolled at the Faculty of Law. In 1764, Vasily Adodurov, the curator of Moscow University, dismissed Dilthey, stating that he had not been trying to benefit the university or its students. Dilthey was replaced with Karl Heinrich Langer, a German who had attended both University of Göttingen and University of Jena but had no degree. Langer's lectures where based on the works by Daniel Nettelbladt. Both Dilthey and Langer taught in Latin. Semyon Desnitsky, one of the Faculty of Law's first alumni and Langer's student, was the first professor to teach in Russian.

In 1773, the Department of Russian Law Studies was established.

During the first decades of the faculty's existence, legal theory (based on Montesquieu), philosophy of law, natural law, Roman law, civil law, criminal law, state law, political science, Russian law studies, and Justinian's Institutes were taught.

19th century
In 1804–1835, the Faculty of Law was replaced with the Faculty of Morality and Politics. The curriculum of the Faculty was expanded to include subjects such as economics, philosophy, and theology. The primary goal of the faculty was to train civil servants, with a focus on legal education. German legal scholars Johann Gottlieb Buhle and Christian Steltzer were among the faculty's professor at that time.

The number of students in the Faculty of Law varied from 50 in the 1800s to 270 at the turn of the 1820s and 1830s. During this period, the Faculty of Law (along with the Faculty of Medicine) was the most popular at Moscow University. At the same time, there were few defenses of doctoral and master's theses, and there was little renewal of the teaching staff.

Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Ogarev, Andrey Krayevsky studied at the Faculty of Law at that time.

Since 1863, the Faculty included thirteen departments (Department of Legal Theory, Department of History of Ancient and Modern Foreign Legislations, Department of History of Russian Law, Department of History of Slavic Legislations, Department of Roman Law, Department of State Law, Department of Civil Law and Civil Procedure, Department of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, Department of Police Law, Department of Financial Law, Department of International Law, Department of Political Economy and Statistics, and Department of Church Law Studies), with thirteen professors and six docents each. Prominent Russian historian Sergey Solovyov taught history of Russia at the Faculty at that time, while Boris Chicherin taught state law and Pamfil Yurkevich taught history of legal philosophy.

Since 1868, Nikolai Tikhonravov had taught Russian literature and Vladimir Guerrier had taught history of the Middle Ages. In 1877–1887, Maksim Kovalevsky taught the constitutional law of European countries. Roman law was taught by Nikolay Bogolepov and Sergey Muromtsev.

20th century
Sergei Prokopovich was the Faculty's dean in 1918.

In 1925–1930, the Faculty was known as the Faculty of Soviet Law.

During the Soviet era, such jurists as Andrey Vyshinsky, Fyodor Kozhevnikov, Stepan Kechekjan, Aron Trainin, Grigory Tunkin lectured at the Faculty of Law.

21st century
Currently the Faculty consists of seventeen departments:


 * 1) Department of Administrative Law (Head: Professor Nikolay Peshin)
 * 2) Department of Business Law (Head: Professor Evgeny Gubin)
 * 3) Department of Civil Law (Head: Professor Evgeny Sukhanov)
 * 4) Department of Civil Procedure (Head: Professor Valery Molchanov)
 * 5) Department of Commercial Law and Fundamentals of Law (Head: Associate Professor Elena Abrosimova)
 * 6) Department of Constitutional and Municipal Law (Head: Professor Suren Avakyan)
 * 7) Department of Criminal Law and Criminology (Head: Associate Professor Pavel Filippov)
 * 8) Department of Criminal Procedure, Justice and Prosecutor's Supervision (Head: Professor Leonid Golovko)
 * 9) Department of Criminalistics (Head: Professor Igor Komarov)
 * 10) Department of Environmental and Land Law (Head: Professor Alexander Golichenkov)
 * 11) Department of Financial Law (Head: Associate Professor Ivan Khamenushko)
 * 12) Department of Foreign Languages (Head: Associate Professor Tatyana Tarasova)
 * 13) Department of History of State and Law (Head: Professor Vladimir Tomsinov)
 * 14) Department of International Law (Head: Associate Professor Olga Kadysheva)
 * 15) Department of Labor Law (Head: Professor Alexander Kurennoy)
 * 16) Department of Legal Informatics, Information and Digital Law (Head: Professor Viktor Vaypan)
 * 17) Department of Theory of State and Law and Political Science (Head: Professor Elizaveta Frolova)